Bout of Books & Armchair BEA

Not my actual TBR pile. Just a picture of books that I had laying around.

Clearly I’m a crazy person. The metro in my city is catching on fire on a daily basis, doubling my commute, and my schedule is busy enough as it is. But I’m going to participate in two concurrent reading events, Bout of Books and Armchair BEA. And since I want to have some time for actually reading, you can count this as my sign-up/introduction post for both.

Let’s start with Bout of Books.

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, May 9th and runs through Sunday, May 15th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 16 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. – From the Bout of Books team

Basically, this is a laid-back readathon that takes place over the course of the week in between everything else in one’s schedule. The general goal is to devote more time to reading, and to make it through some books.

My goal over the week is to read at least two books. I’m not entirely sure which yet. Maybe I’ll finish The Sparrow, which I started during Dewey’s Read-a-Thon. Or maybe I’ll finish Kingfisher, which I’ve been reading on my Kindle on the rare days I get a seat on the train. Or maybe I’ll read some of the ARCs I’ve got laying around that I really should get to ASAP. We shall see! I’ll be adding progress updates either here or in a second post, but before I determine which, I need to make some progress!

Day #1 Progress: on page 69/452 of City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett.

Day #2 Progress: read from 17% to 31% of Kingfisher by Patricia McKillip. Not a ton of progress, but it was also DND night.

Day #3 Progress: 44% of Kingfisher and page 145 of City of Stairs. Accidentally read through the Armchair BEA Twitter Chat, and didn’t do the Bout of Books mini challenges. Oh well. 🙂

Day #4 Progress: 55% of Kingfisher and page 181 of City of Stairs.

Next up is Armchair BEA.

Going to Book Expo America is normally the high point of my year. I’ve gone three times since I started blogging, and each time I’ve been so excited and amazed to meet other authors, bloggers, publishers, and folks who are as excited about books as I am. This year BEA is in Chicago rather than NYC, and at the same time, work has gotten busier. I decided that this year I’m going to skip the trip and participate in Armchair BEA instead.

Armchair BEA is a virtual conference of bloggers who can’t make it to BEA. I participated the one other year that I missed BEA, and it was a great way to interact with the blogging community and capture some of that same excitement. There are different discussion prompts each day, a bunch of Twitter chats, and fun challenges and giveaways. The event runs from May 11-16, and will *hopefully* distract me from all the fun I’ll be missing in Chicago.

It sounds like you and I must live in the same area! I got stuck on our metro for an hour yesterday — but good reading time at least! Hope you enjoyed the two events. I’m hoping to get to BEA next year, I’ve never been.

Are you in the DC area, by any chance? I’ve had so many issues with the metro that I am filled with rage every day when I commute. I just want a public transit system that isn’t on fire, and that shouldn’t be too much to ask. 😛